Stop searching for your other half. You’re whole already.

Mind blown. Why did I feel pressure to search for my other half? As if I wasn’t fully and wholly enough just as is. As if there was something missing. Something needed to complete me, to complete my family.

Photo Credit: Steve Brandt at Creative Compassion PhotographyA dear friend pointed this out to me a few months back, as I voiced how I longed for my son to witness me in a healthy marriage. For him to watch healthy interaction between a husband and wife. I voiced my concern of a man not being daily present in his life. That me, being only mom couldn’t teach my son the things a boy learns from watching a father. When that friend challenged me, I realized that even though I felt confident to raise my son on my own, I still struggled with being me, only one person. Only half of the typical two parents many children have present daily.

Society, and often times religion, like to impose the necessity of a partner to be considered complete. That idea that children need two parents to thrive. Not just that, there’s the stigma that both a male and female are needed. And I call bull–bullion cubes on that one! The reason I felt inadequate, is because I was told and made to believe that parenting alone is just that, an inadequate way to raise a child.

Photo Credit: Steve Brandt at Creative Compassion PhotographyAs people, we often follow in the direction others have proclaimed over us, or generalized over a group of people. It creates a cap on success, communicating a limit to the success rates. As if before we start we’ve already been proclaimed as a person destined to struggle. Because of that, we enter into situations expecting difficulty. Expecting to endure unnecessary hardships and trials.

I’m here today to tell you that through my personal experience I’ve learned that’s a lie. A freaking delusion. I orchestrated under a mindset of confidence but yet feeling inadequate because it’s me alone. Failing to see the very truth, that I’m far from missing my other half.

I arrived to the battlegrounds of single motherhood ready for just that, a battle. Preparing myself by scrounging for the tools to help defend against the hardships that I thought were bound for me in the dreaded roll of [insert blinking red sign] “Single Motherhood”.

Photo Credit: Steve Brandt at Creative Compassion Photography
As time went on I realized all I needed to do was just “be”. To change my mind set on my self. Open my mind to see my self the way I was designed. Whole! NOT half way complete. Only then I was able to see my self through that new identity, through His lens. One of kingdom identity. Where God proclaims over me that I am Enough. Through re-wiring my brain I saw that I was equipped. Designed to thrive. Made in His image, and through the union with Christ I lacked nothing. See, my dear friends, Christ bridges that gap for us. Where we lacked. We now lack nothing in Him. I don’t lack a half. Because with Him I’m whole. Single motherhood my booty. There’s nothing negative about this role. I’m a mom, there’s nothing single about what I do.

Photo Credit: Steve Brandt at Creative Compassion PhotographyIt doesn’t take a mom and a dad to raise a child. It doesn’t require two people, 4 hands. It requires loving humans, loving on the tiny human and breathing empowerment through Truth to parent them. I’m in no way dismissing the impact a village can have. I believe my village, the people that have lavished love and support on me, are the whispers of the Father’s heart. Reminding me I can do this–and why I can.

Single motherhood was never intended to be a burden. Not a hardship. It might be a result of a broken relationship. But that brokenness doesn’t continue into the next chapters role of continued parenting.

Nothing is broken about “single” parenting. It’s just an old mindset that needs to be rejuvenated to see things new.

Breathe deep and plant your foot down for that next step, confidently. You’re enough. I am enough. Because He is never lacking, and we lack nothing in Him!